Legal Expert Reveals How Fast Mueller Findings Could Lead To Trump Indictment

On Friday, after Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team and New York federal prosecutors submitted two sentencing memos against President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen, a number of legal experts predicted that the development could mark the end of Trump’s presidency. As previously reported by the Inquisitr, the memos are thought to implicate Trump in two federal felonies.

Furthermore, as Vox reported, Robert Mueller submitted a sentencing memo against former Trump Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, fueling speculation that the investigations launched against Donald Trump could lead to his impeachment and, ultimately, indictment.

MSNBC‘s legal analyst Danny Cevallos offered a unique perspective on the issue, Raw Story reports, revealing how Robert Mueller’s findings can lead to the indictment of President Donald Trump. According to Cevallos, there are a few major issues that those seeking to indict Trump are required to bypass in due time, with the biggest one being the statute of limitations.

“Generally, federal laws have a statute of limitation of about five years, we just use that for an example,” Cevallos explained. “With conspiracy, the conspiracy statute of limitation starts running from the date of the last conspirator’s act. For example, if an act was committed last week, you add five years.”

The fact that Trump occupies the highest office in the land is clearly an obstacle for Mueller as well, since indicting a sitting president would raise a slew of legal and other issues. Still, according to Cevallos, if Donald Trump ends up being a one-term president, the chances of his indictment are much higher.

“He can conceivably be indicted while a citizen and you avoid the entire thorny issue of whether or not you can indict a president.”

MSNBC‘s legal analyst explained that he believes that indicting a sitting president is virtually impossible for two reasons. The Constitution says that the president has to be impeached first, then removed, and then indicted. Given that the Republicans control the Senate, the impeachment would likely not pass the upper chamber. The second reason, according to the legal expert, is “practical” because by indicting Trump, the government would effectively have to indict the entire executive branch.

But not everyone agrees with Ceveallos and other legal experts. Frequent Trump defender and scholar of United States constitutional law, Alan Dershowitz, argued in an interview broadcast Friday that Robert Mueller has a “very, very weak” case against Donald Trump, according to the Washington Examiner. Dershowitz downplayed Mueller’s findings, asserting that the Cohen memos in fact demonstrate that the special counsel’s office has hit a wall with Michael Cohen, thought by many to be a key witness in probes against Trump.